He observed, “that among the diversions of our
nobility and gentry, I had mentioned gaming:
he desired to know at what age this entertainment
was usually taken up, and when it was laid down; how
much of their time it employed; whether it ever went
so high as to affect their fortunes; whether mean,
vicious people, by their dexterity in that art, might
not arrive at great riches, and sometimes keep our
very nobles in dependence, as well as habituate them
to vile companions, wholly take them from the improvement
of their minds, and force them, by the losses they
received, to learn and practise that infamous dexterity
upon others?”
He was perfectly astonished with the historical account
gave him of our affairs during the last century; protesting
“it was only a heap of conspiracies, rebellions,
murders, massacres, revolutions, banishments, the
very worst effects that avarice, faction, hypocrisy,
perfidiousness, cruelty, rage, madness, hatred, envy,
lust, malice, and ambition, could produce.”
His majesty, in another audience, was at the pains
to recapitulate the sum of all I had spoken; compared
the questions he made with the answers I had given;
then taking me into his hands, and stroking me gently,
delivered himself in these words, which I shall never
forget, nor the manner he spoke them in: “My
little friend Grildrig, you have made a most admirable
panegyric upon your country; you have clearly proved,
that ignorance, idleness, and vice, are the proper
ingredients for qualifying a legislator; that laws
are best explained, interpreted, and applied, by those
whose interest and abilities lie in perverting, confounding,
and eluding them. I observe among you some lines
of an institution, which, in its original, might have
been tolerable, but these half erased, and the rest
wholly blurred and blotted by corruptions. It
does not appear, from all you have said, how any one
perfection is required toward the procurement of any
one station among you; much less, that men are ennobled
on account of their virtue; that priests are advanced
for their piety or learning; soldiers, for their conduct
or valour; judges, for their integrity; senators, for
the love of their country; or counsellors for their
wisdom. As for yourself,” continued the
king, “who have spent the greatest part of your
life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you
may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country.
But by what I have gathered from your own relation,
and the answers I have with much pains wrung and extorted
from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives
to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin
that nature ever suffered to crawl upon the surface
of the earth.”
[The author’s love of his country. He
makes a proposal of much advantage to the king, which
is rejected. The king’s great ignorance
in politics. The learning of that country very
imperfect and confined. The laws, and military
affairs, and parties in the state.]
